Thanksgiving TV: Plan Your Other Binge

Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful for life’s blessings, which, for many of us, includes plenty of family and a long weekend.

Hopefully that’s a combination that makes for abundant warm fellowship and scintillating conversation. But in case it doesn’t, you can at least be thankful that streaming video services and their voluminous offerings can fill hours that might otherwise be devoted to political arguments or awkward silences.

Below the television critics and editors of The New York Times offer some targeted suggestions for what to watch with which members of your clan.

Your Nieces and Nephews

“Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street” (Amazon)

Children can binge, too. Amazon Video recently added a second season of “Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street,” its smart and charming live-action series for preteens. This means there are now 26 episodes to stream — about nine and a half hours, which should get you and your kids through almost all of the Thanksgiving leftovers.

Mixing a pleasant ordinariness with a low-key magical realism, the show dramatizes the lessons learned by Gortimer and his friends Ranger and Mel as they grow up in the leafy environs of Every Suburb, U.S.A. Gortimer receives a new blazer that transforms him into an incipient adult and the aide-de-camp to the town’s mayor; Ranger’s adoption as mascot by the basketball team literally electrifies him; Mel rewrites the town’s history when she discovers that not all of its founders were men. Life on Normal Street is both perfectly normal and anything but. — MIKE HALE

Your TV Snob Aunt

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Justin Theroux and Carrie Coon in “The Leftovers.”CreditVan Redin/HBO

“The Leftovers” (HBO Go)

I recommend this series not simply because it has the most Thanksgiving-appropriate title on television. It’s also, for all its metaphysical weirdness, a story about family and loved ones. One Oct. 14, two percent of the world’s population vanishes — poof, suddenly gone, with no discernible pattern. We don’t know why or how, and the series seems determined not to explain. Instead, it focuses on the survivors — the “leftovers” of the title — and the strategies, from nihilism to cults, they rely on to make sense of life after “the Sudden Departure.”

The first season, set in suburban New York, was haunting but uneven. (Pressed for time? At least watch the premiere and the standout episodes “Guest” — showcasing the phenomenal Carrie Coon — and “The Garveys at Their Best,” which flashes back to the Departure.) The rebooted second season has been astounding, as Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) and his troubled family move to Jarden, Tex., the lone town that claims to have lost no residents on Oct. 14.

This is heavy stuff, but at two seasons, it’s the perfect mini-binge; start now and catch up in time for the Season 2 finale on HBO Dec. 6. If you’re a fan of thoughtful drama, you won’t want to be left behind. — JAMES PONIEWOZIK

Your Foodie Sister

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Dan Barber, foreground, in “Chef’s Table” on Netflix.CreditNetflix

“Chef’s Table” (Netflix)

I know, I know. It seems perverse to suggest watching a show about delicious food on the occasion of this nation’s most intense eating holiday. But the food featured in this documentary series, which focuses on six transformative chefs from around the world, is better than anything you’ll consume during this long weekend. (No disrespect to any of your family members.)

The series, which has episodes set in Italy, upstate New York, Patagonia, Los Angeles, Australia and Sweden, also doubles as a de facto travelogue. Gorgeously filmed — if a bit too dependent on slow motion and classical music — “Chef’s Table” is great to watch straight through or while popping in and out of the living room. The Patagonia and Australia segments are particularly strong. — GILBERT CRUZ

Your Sports Nut Brother-In-Law

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“Sports Jeopardy!,” hosted by Dan Patrick, is on Crackle.CreditJ. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

“Sports Jeopardy!” (Crackle)

You want something relatively mindless on the long weekend, but if you’re a certain type of person you also want something sports-related, and the live football offerings may not be enough.

That’s where “Sports Jeopardy!” comes in. Begun last year on the streaming service Crackle, it’s just what it sounds like: A version of the classic game show that’s all sports, all the time. Dan Patrick, a familiar face from ESPN and NBC Sports, fills the Alex Trebek role, but the questions (or, technically, answers) are the real stars. Categories are fanciful and wide-ranging. On a recent episode, “Outta Here!” consisted of trivia about memorable ejections from sports contests; “Come At Me, Bro!” was about athletic brothers. Will you be smarter after watching “Sports Jeopardy!” for hours? Not really. But you’ll know that three Selmon brothers played on the Oklahoma Sooners’ defensive line in 1973. — NEIL GENZLINGER

Your Anglophile Grandma

“The Great British Baking Show,” a curiously delightful entry available to watch on Netflix, is the ideal backdrop to a day that, face it, is all about the food.

The contestants, as homey as your Aunt Jo or Cousin Ned, sweat over their mixers in a tent plopped down on an English estate, where bleating lambs frolic in a field full of snowdrops. But the confections themselves — a cardamom-scented Swiss roll crowned by chocolate-lace flowers; a Hansel-and-Gretel scene of brandy snaps and gingerbread; Victoria sponges ruffled with lemon curd and raspberry cream — are the real stars. The cookbook author Mary Berry and the baker Paul Hollywood preside over the challenges, which progress from simpler pastries like cherry cake and savory biscuits to more complicated ones, like sweet fruit loaves and schichttortes. There’s no Gordon Ramsay-esque bombast here: The most dramatic reaction is the subtle clearing of Mr. Hollywood’s throat. The only possible drawback? Prolonged gluttony when inspiration sends you back to the kitchen for a Thanksgiving do-over. — KATHRYN SHATTUCK

Your Demented Cousins

The ghoulish matriarch is perhaps the spookiest but hardly the most disturbing member of the Heartshe family, the repugnant clan at the center of “The Heart, She Holler.” The deranged Southern Gothic soap opera parody, created by the people behind “Wonder Showzen” and “Xavier: Renegade Angel,” ran for three seasons on Adult Swim, most of which you can plow through in a day or so. (There are 28 episodes but each is only 11 minutes long.)

Like other Adult Swim offerings, the show is stupid-smart, using gross-out gags and ridiculous, self-consciously broad stereotypes to create a gonzo, acid take on folksy Americana. Patton Oswalt stars as a feral rube unearthed from a cave and made mayor of the titular holler (backwoods-speak for “hollow”). Dynastic power struggles and more ambitious flights of fancy ensue — later episodes spin off alternate realities and link the Heartshes with the birth of America — almost all of it drenched in viscera. But it’s also absurdly hilarious, if you’re the sort who appreciates a little harmless transgression with your pumpkin pie.— JEREMY EGNER